User Centered Design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process (from: Wikipedia). It means the UCD is a process for designer to study and analyse user's needs for and problem solving on designing something that will fulfill and how likely the users will like the product.
What is Simplicity?
Simplicity is not simple.
Simplicity are something are other than simple but simple. It make something look simple but it has complicated means behind the simple-look cover. It has its quality of being simple that make it different than just simple. Just like some of the logo designs, may be it looks simple, but actually it has many meaning behind it. So, simplicity make things not simple but simple. It is not just simple or simplistic.
There is several Human Perception that will affects a human's likes.
And they are:
Chunking
In psycology, Chunking is a phenomenon whereby individuals group responses when performing a memory task (from: Wikipedia) The elements of perception + memory are equal to chunks. Presentation of information is simplified by dividing it up. Just like if there is a group of 26 alphabets that arranged randomly, it is most likely harder for us to memorize part of them. But when they are divided into groups, people will be easier to memorize them group by group. By dividing the elements, human are easier to memorize and recall.
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| Which do you think you can recall easier? |
Contrast
Contrast is a difference in visual properties that makes something in an object occurs to be stand out better than other elements of the object. Most likely it often can be seen in photography or images. Contrast is irregularities in design that communicates information and makes elements stand out. These occurs mostly when we watching on an object that has complementary colors. Not just colors, some others elements like the size also can be contrast.
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| Flower in photography often use contrast technique to stand out the flower. |
Visual Variables are used for communication by encoding data and drawing distinctions between visual elements. There are 2 ways that visual variables work on perception, one of it is selectivity and another one is associativity.
Selectivity
It is degree to which a single value can be selected from the entire visual field. Which means from the entire part of an object, there will be a single part that will most attracting the user's attention. Mostly the selectivity used the position, size, orientation, hue, value, texture to perform and attract the attention at the certain part. Example like the picture shown, all the attraction will be focus on the eel that out of the net but not those eel in the net, that was because it is different than the others.
Associativity is opposite of selectivity. It make easy to ignore the variable and let it all blend in to one another. Just like the whole object doesn't have anything that will constantly attract your attention but the whole object are look blending together and doesn't have any focusing part. Like the picture shown below, may be the colors are different but the object of all the picture are blend together and there does not say which of the picture are more likely attracted your attention because all of them are even.
There is some graphic design guidelines,
The design must have:
1. Simplicity but not simplistic
2. Good contrast
3. Good control of white space
4. Balance
5. Alignment
By, Yee Kuang Hooi.
Hiccarus Lesselion, 1102702258.
